There was an Expressionist style in the cinema, important examples of which are Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ( 1920 ), The Golem: How He Came into the World ( 1920 ), Fritz Lang's Metropolis ( 1927 ) and F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror ( 1922 ) and The Last Laugh ( 1924 ).

Murnau's Sunrise ( 1927 ).

In 1925 – 26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, the U. S. rights to the Tri-Ergon system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Theodore Case to create the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, introduced in 1927 with the release of F. W. Murnau's Sunrise.

Each tale follows the same story, inspired by F. W. Murnau's Sunrise ( 1927 ) — a man, married or otherwise committed to a woman is tempted by a second woman and eventually returns to the first woman.

In June 2008, the band performed an original score to F. W. Murnau's 1927 silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Faust was Murnau's last German movie, and directly afterward he moved to the US under contract to William Fox to direct Sunrise ( 1927 ); when the film premiered in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin, Murnau was already shooting in Hollywood.

Murnau's 1927 masterpiece Sunrise, played the title role in 1934's Frontier Marshal three years after Stuart N. Lake's book first appeared.

German film director F. W. Murnau had recently made The Last Laugh and Sunrise and was the most critically acclaimed director in Hollywood, and Hawks's attempted to imitate Murnau's style with this film.

Flaherty then agreed to collaborate with F. W. Murnau on another South Seas picture, Tabu, but this combination proved even more volatile, and while Flaherty did contribute significantly to the story, the finished film is essentially Murnau's.

F. W. Murnau's vampire horror film Nosferatu was released in 1922.

Murnau's best known work was his 1922 film Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Murnau's most famous film is Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for which Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement.

Murnau's last German film was the big budget Faust ( 1926 ) with Gösta Ekman as the title character, Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Camilla Horn as Gretchen.

Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version.

Murnau's next two films, the ( now lost ) Four Devils ( 1928 ) and City Girl ( 1930 ), were modified to adapt to the new era of sound film and were not well received.

The film was originally shot by cinematographer Floyd Crosby as half-talkie, half-silent, before being fully restored as a silent film — Murnau's preferred medium.

Murnau's film featured special effects that were remarkable for the time and many of these shots are still impressive today.

Professor von Braun ( the name taken from German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun ) was originally known as Leonard Nosferatu ( a tribute to F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu ), but Caution is repeatedly told that Nosferatu no longer exists.

Some works of fiction, such as Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's operetta The Threepenny Opera or F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh, have intentionally implausible happy endings.

Murnau's 1922 film.

Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version.

In F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the character is renamed Ellen, due to the copyright issues surrounding this film.

He also returned to film acting for several years and appeared in such notable German films as Das Wachsfigurenkabinett ( Waxworks ) ( 1924 ) and F. W. Murnau's Faust ( 1926 ).

With this novel, Nezval explored the gothic themes and settings of such novels as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and M. G. Lewis ' The Monk, as well as F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu ( based on Dracula by Bram Stoker ).

Max Schrek's disturbing portrayal of this role in Murnau's film was copied by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake Nosferatu the Vampyre ( 1979 ).

In later years, he was called upon by silent film historian Kevin Brownlow to write an original score for F. W. Murnau's classic silent horror Nosferatu ( 1922 / 1997 ) and for Brownlow's documentary Universal Horror ( 1998 ) on the horror films of the American studio.

Max Schrek's disturbing portrayal of this role in Murnau's film was copied by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht ( 1979 ).

Extensive analyses include those by: George Toles, "' Cocoon of Fire: Awakening to Love in Murnau's Sunrise "; Diane Stevenson, " Three Versions of Stella Dallas "; and Jonah Corne's " Gods and Nobodies: Extras, the October Jubilee, and Von Sternberg's The Last Command.

Street Angel was one of three movies for which Janet Gaynor received an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929 ; the others were F. W. Murnau's Sunrise and Borzage's Seventh Heaven.

Shadow of the Vampire ( 2000 ) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu ( 1922 ).

Also, unlike the majority of Murnau's other works, The Last Laugh is considered a Kammerspielfilm with Expressionist elements.

His visual design is suggestive of that of Count Orlok in Murnau's Nosferatu as played by Max Schreck, his vocal characterization of Béla Lugosi impersonators.

There is, however, a very small sub-genre, pioneered in Murnau's seminal Nosferatu ( 1922 ) in which the portrayal of the vampire is similar to the hideous creature of European folklore.

Released on September 17, 1920 by the Lipow Co., this is one of Murnau's lost films.

There is, however, a very small sub-genre, pioneered in Murnau's seminal Nosferatu ( 1922 ) in which the vampire is depicted in the hideous lineaments of the creature of European folklore.

The first vampire-themed movie was made during this time: F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu ( 1922 ), an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

" Years later Karl Freund dismissed Murnau's contributions to the films that they made together, claiming that Murnau had no interest in lighting and never looked through the camera, and that " Carl Mayer used to take much more interest than he did in framing.

" Years later C. A. Lejeune called it " probably the least sensational and certainly the most important of Murnau's films.

The film's ownership reverted to Murnau's mother Ottilie Plumpe after distribution rights lapsed in the mid 1930s.

The re-release was not a success and in the 1960s Murnau's nieces, Ursula Plumpe and Eva Diekmann, bought back the rights.

Although some of Murnau's films have been lost, most still survive.

Murnau's mother Otilie Volbracht was the second wife of his father Heinrich Plumpe, the owner of a cloth-factory in the north-western part of Germany.

Nearly as important as Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was The Last Laugh (" Der Letzte Mann ", German " The Last Man ") ( 1924 ), written by Carl Mayer ( a very prominent figure of the Kammerspielfilm movement ) and starring Emil Jannings.